It was a balmy evening in Santa Barbara, California. I’d arrived late the night before for a conference, having flown in for just five days, all the way from Sydney.
Arriving at the hotel, I dropped my suitcase off in my room and went down to the bar. I ordered a big glass of Californian red (deeeelicous) and looked around, soaking it all in. I felt like I was on top of the world I’d created for myself.
Next day, after wandering the sweet streets and visiting a favourite local coffee shop I’d frequented while on holiday with my hubby, Nic, just a few months prior, I went back to the gorgeous boutique hotel and took myself up to the rooftop pool. It had views across beautiful Santa Barbara, with mountains on one side and the ocean on the other. I took a deep breath in. I cracked open my notebook and started scribbling out scripts for chakra meditations, which I’d later record once I got home.
People who listen to those particular meditations (you’ll know if you have) consistently comment on how much they love them. Apart from them resonating with my work, I have a theory about why.
Firstly, I believe it’s because I wrote them in Santa Barbara on that beautiful warm afternoon, looking out at the mountains and the sea. Although I’ve only been twice, Santa Barbara feels like home to me in some way, and this definitely came through in my writing.
Secondly, I believe it’s because I was following what lights me up. Writing those meditations on the rooftop, while travelling overseas to attend a conference for a software company I love was a new experience for me, and a memory I’ll always cherish. Not only that, I’d never written a meditation album before, and I felt real excitement and expansion at the thought of doing so.
Along the way though, I had to ask myself (countless times): ‘Can I do this work I love?’ The answer, sitting on that rooftop, was a resounding, pounding ‘Yes!’.
This is your invitation to join me. To do the work that lights you up; to do the work that lights the way for others to find their own light; to let yourself become aligned and unstoppable, on your path to loving what you create.
Pop quiz time (circle all the answers that apply). The best place to start is:
C, right? Just kidding. It’s A and B, and a beautiful combination of them.
For you to take action on any of the words that come through on these next pages, for you to receive anything you’re wanting to create and trying to make space for, and for you to rise to where you want to be, you have to know already, right now, that you are enough.
When you know that you are enough, then by extension you know that your work is enough. And to release your work into the world, you have to trust yourself, even while you continue to explore and discover deeper layers of who you are.
Before you take a step forwards, you have to trust yourself, back yourself and believe in yourself.
This isn’t arrogance I’m asking you to adopt, but rather a system of self-belief that you might not have taken on board before. I don’t want you to run recklessly into your future, undermining yourself and your hard work by expecting things or thinking you deserve to be successful, simply because you’re working hard.
On that note … to shift out of a state of entitlement, we need to shift into showing up with more soul. This becomes easier and feels more natural, the more aligned to your truth you become.
So I invite you now, in this chapter and in every following chapter, to show up for yourself and your work, for your creativity and your voice, and for all the parts of you that want to be seen and heard, that want to create and share, celebrating yourself every step of the way.
As you’ll discover, if you don’t back yourself, how can you ask anyone else to?
So let’s do that, first. Before anything else, trust yourself. You don’t need some earth-shattering change to rumble through you for this to happen. You can decide, right now, that you and your voice, your work and your dreams—all of you—is enough.
From this space, you can do the work you know you came here to do. From this space, you can create, and share, and speak, and move towards your dreams.
From this space, you can ask others to join you on this journey, but only if you trust yourself (and your higher and deepest self) first.
When we’re working towards something (whether it’s in our life, biz, career, or dreams we don’t even fully understand yet), it’s good to know our ‘why’.
Our ‘why’ makes up part of our greater purpose, the reason we’re feeling called to do what we do. Our ‘why’ might be related to something we’ve experienced and want to help others navigate, a deeper reason that drives a passion, a calling, or something that whispers to us and won’t let us forget it. It’s important to have an inkling—or a deep knowing—of what this is.
It’s also important to think of your ‘why not’. Your ‘why not’ is the part of you that can’t not create, that can’t not do this work, that can’t not work towards what you’re creating. Put more simply, it’s the part of you that has to; the part that can’t put that new spark of an idea to rest until you’ve lit the match and started to bring it into form.
Your ‘why’ isn’t always the first reason for creating something in your life and business. You create it because you have to, because it calls for you and tugs at you, drawing you closer.
Your ‘why not’ might shift and change, but at its core it remains the same. The answer to your ‘why not’ is often as simple as: ‘Because I have to ... because I can’t not.’
Even if you don’t know the outcome; even if you don’t know all the details (yet); even if you can’t see the bigger picture (yet); even if the resistance feels like it’s creating mountains out of molehills, and you feel far away from your dreams; even if creating it calls for you to change your mind, to stand up for something you believe in (that no-one else can see), to course-correct, and to back yourself more fully.
What is your ‘why not’? What do you have to do, and create, and make, and share? What’s calling your name? Will you answer the call?
Now that you’ve given yourself permission to trust yourself, to follow your ‘why not’, and to deepen your work, I invite you to believe in yourself and trust what you’re creating.
You must believe in yourself first, if you are to invite others to believe in you too.
By this I mean that whatever your version of creativity and ‘doing the work’ and business looks like, whatever you’re working on in your life, trust how it’s showing up for you. Stop looking outside yourself and comparing your life and work to everyone else. Allow yourself to love what your work looks like, and how it’s coming through for you.
Trusting yourself—your innate worth, your business/career acumen, your creativity, as well as your choices and decisions—is how you’ll build a beautiful, sustainable business, a purposeful path, and a deeply creative and fulfilled life.
I love business; it’s in my blood. Almost everyone in my family is an entrepreneur and has created a business and career they love. So I grew up watching how business is done; I grew up knowing it’s safe to create, honour and work towards a dream.
And yet it took me months to come to accept that this book would be about business, writing, spirituality, creativity and loving what you’re creating in life and business.
I kept trying to talk myself out of writing a book about these topics, especially one relating to business and creativity, because I didn’t want to alienate people who might get something out of my book, but who didn’t run their own business. But underneath that was a tinge of fear—the fear of judgement. I wondered, ‘Who am I to write this book?’
As I sat down to journal one morning, I asked my Guides a question through automatic writing. This is a way of journalling where you ask the Universe (or whatever higher power you believe in) a question, and then just let whatever answer flows through you land on the page. The answer I received was, The whole book is already written. (If there’s ever a sentence that’ll soothe a writer’s soul, that’s it!) I knew then that this book was to be the next step in my creative journey, the next piece to add to my body of work, fears and all.
Then I remembered something else: I deeply wanted to write this book. The idea had dropped in months ago, and the book had been coming through in sentences and phrases, words and themes, for months and months.
I realised that I had to do this for myself, first and foremost. I realised that by dimming my own light—ignoring what lights me up—I wasn’t doing anyone any favours. (Especially when writing a book about doing the work that lights you up!)
I also remembered that my business and my writing are simply the vessels for my creativity. Perhaps in just one area of my life, but we each have many vessels we can funnel our fullest potential into.
You may be here because you run your own business (or want to one day); because you’re a writer (or want to give yourself permission to say so); or because you want to start honing and using your unique voice to fully express and create in your life. Whatever the reason, I hope that by being here, you’re reminded of your own light, and you answer a resounding ‘yes’ when asked if you’ll show up more fully in your life, creativity and business.
To do this, you must first love and accept your work. By ‘work’, I mean whatever you’re doing that lights you up the most, whatever work you can’t imagine not doing. You must honour it, fully and deeply and in all the right places.
Don’t worry about possible judgement coming from others, or from yourself. Don’t let yourself dream up the worst possible scenarios about how your work will be revealed or received by others. Love and accept it for what it is, and for how it wants to come through you. Only then can you release it to others.
See your work as your personal power project; see what you create as the vessel for how you speak to the deepest parts of yourself. Then you’ll always honour it, because you’re honouring yourself.
I trust myself, my voice, and what I’m creating every day. I let myself deepen what I desire, stand up for what I believe, and do the work that lights me up.